Week 3: Reflections:

This week we have had to meet the following behavioral objectives:

1-Using Delicious.com to store useful links: Participants in this course (Audience), after reading the instructions about using Delicious.com (Condition), will create and begin to use their own Delicious site, and share the URL of their site (Behavior) including at least three links with appropriate tags (category descriptions) (Degree).

2- Aural/oral skill-building websites: Participants in this course (Audience), after reviewing at least two different speaking, listening, and/or pronunciation web sites in terms of use in their classes (Condition), will share comments about the sites, including the target audience, skill(s) enhanced, and an overall recommendation (Behavior) in at least one post on Nicenet that includes the URL for the web pages (Degree).

3- Using technology in teaching: After reading about using technology in teaching (Condition), participants in this course (Audience) will explain how they might use technology to improve their students' aural/oral skills (Behavior) in at least one post on Nicenet (Degree).

4- Blog: Participants in the course (Audience) will share their reflections on what they did and what they learned this week related to aural/oral skill-building and Delicious and comment on another person's post (Behavior) in at least one post on their own blog and one comment (Degree).

1.1 Using Delicious.com to store useful links:
Personally speaking, this is the first time I have come across such a website that allows Internet users to bookmark links that they like online. The purpose of the site is to enable the user to have easy access to his or her favorite links from any computer. For me, I use a workstation and a laptop to do my work at home and I always had to store my URLs on both computers. Fortunately, I don't have to do that now because I can always refer to My Delicious Page online.

The good thing about having a Delicious page is that you can share it with others, especially your students and colleagues. Moreover, you don't have to worry about losing your bookmarked links if your PC breaks down or gets infected by a virus.


2.1 Aural/oral skill-building websites:
In this task, we had to review a number of skill-building websites in order to select some activities that cater to our students. In addition, we had to include the URLs of the websites and activities that we had chosen, mention the level of students who could use these websites, and give our overall recommendation about the sites.

The purpose of this task is obvious. Technology can be used by teachers to prepare activities for their students. Additionally, teachers can make use of the ready designed lesson plans on the Internet.

For me, I chose two activities for my Business Students from Randall's ESL Cyber Listening Lab and About.com, both of which I recommend to English teachers:

The first activity that I selected was a two-minute listening exercise that contains a conversation between two people making business proposals. It is followed by five multiple-choice questions and a text completion quiz. The students are able to review the script of the conversation where key vocabulary are concentrated on.

This exercise is terribly useful for learners to practice not only their listening skills, but also their speaking skills. I believe that these two skills, i.e. listening and speaking, are interrelated because without an input there can't be an output. Of course, reading is another important language input but it might not probably be able to do as good as the listening does to the pronunciation of a target language.

The second activity was a speaking exercise that trains students on making telephone calls to request travel information, product information, leave a message and sell a product. The roles of each pair student in each conversation is clearly stated.

Speaking in a foreign language on the telephone could arguably be a problem to even advanced students. In a face to face conversation, you can use your body language in addition to words to express yourself. Over the phone the story is different. You have to use words only, and that's why it's difficult for learners.

3.1 Using technology in teaching:
In this task, we had to read at least two articles on using technology in teaching and then had to explain how we might use technology to improve our students' aural/oral skills.

My first post on Nicenet was an overview about what I read in Dennie Hoopingarner's Best Practices in Technology and Language Teaching, and Lindsay Miller's Developing Listening Skills with Authentic Materials.

In my second post I pointed out that although many of the online tools suggested in the articles this week are not difficult to use, teachers and students need some time to get acquainted with them. Examples of these are some of the websites on Larry Ferlazzo's lists of Best Sites To Practice Speaking English. Therefore, I think asking my students to practice their speaking skills on these websites will be time-consuming and an additional burden. Besides, because it is not required from them in the syllabus of the course to use online tools, they may not be encouraged to do it. However, on the level of blogging and the websites that address listening and vocabulary, this should be alright with most of my students.


Note: Do not forget to participate in the poll above!


Yours,

Mohamed